Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, May 26, 1995                   TAG: 9505260083
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A11   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

IN THE NATION

WASHINGTON - A federal task force will coordinate government services to find missing children, giving new hope to parents like Janice McKinney, whose daughter disappeared a decade ago.

``Every year my hope dwindles, then something happens like this to give me hope again,'' McKinney said Thursday after the task force was announced. ``They say it gets easier. But it doesn't.''

Attorney General Janet Reno used the occasion of the 12th annual Missing Children's Day to announce the task force on missing and exploited children. The goal is to combine the forces of several federal agencies, she said, ranging from the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention office and the Federal Bureau of Investigation to the Customs Service.

- Associated Press

U.S. abortion rate drops by 12 %

WASHINGTON - Some 6.5 million American women were pregnant in 1992, but only five pregnancies out of eight resulted in live births, the government reported Thursday.

In addition to 1.5 million abortions, there were 900,000 miscarriages and stillbirths, the National Center for Health Statistics said. Some 4.1 million babies were born that year.

The center said the abortion rate dropped by 12 percent from 1980 to 1992, partly because of a drop in the number of women in their late teens and 20s, when abortion rates are highest.

- Associated Press

Briefly ...

Vice President Al Gore announced plans Thursday to make Veterans Administration medical facilities more accessible to veterans, including reforming eligibility requirements, simplifying means testing and allowing payment through Medicare.

A Cleveland jury convicted former Phar-Mor Inc. president Michael Monus on Thursday in a $1 billion fraud and embezzlement scheme that forced the discount drugstore chain he founded into bankruptcy. Monus faces up to 1,246 years in prison and $36 million in fines.